by Jim Butcher
Kord smiled, a flash of teeth and said, "Go ahead, Warner. Call it to juris macto. Let's settle this like men. Unless you'd rather humiliate your little
whore by having her testify how she seduced my boy in front of every Stead-holder in the Calderon Valley."
One of Warner's sons, a tall and lean young man with his hair shorn in Legion-fashion stepped up to his father and took his arm. "Pa, don't," he said. "You can't take him on in a fair fight." The other two took up a spot behind Warner, while Kord's sons mirrored them behind their own father.
Warner's daughter rushed to his side. Heddy's cobweb-fine hair rose and rippled in silken yellow waves in the heated air around her father. She threw a conscientious look around her, her face flaming scarlet with embarrassment. "Papa," she urged. "No, not like this. This isn't our way."
Kord snorted at the girl. "Bittan," he asked, glancing back at his son. "You stuck your wick in that skinny tramp? Might as well have gone after one of Warner's sheep."
Isana had to clench her fists and brace herself against the raw tide of emotions in the courtyard. From Heddy's panicky fear and humiliation to Warner's rage, to Kord's sly satisfaction and eagerness, every feeling washed over her, too intense to ignore. She forced them all away from her and took a breath. Kord's earth fury was a vicious beast, trained to kill. He used it to hunt and to slaughter his cattle. Any fury started taking on aspects of its partner, after a while, but even considering Kord himself, the earth fury was a bad one. A killer.
Isana swept a look around the courtyard. The holdfolk all stood well clear of the conflict. None of them wanted to involve themselves in a struggle between Steadholders. Crows take her brother! Where was he when she needed him?
The flood of intense anger from Warner grew more harsh-in only a moment more, he would give in to Kord's taunts and take the matter to juris macto, the Realm's legal form of duel. Kord would kill him, but Warner was too furious at the treatment of his daughter to consider that. Warner's sons, too, were flooding her with a growing torrent of anger, and Kord's youngest son burned with a barely disguised lust for violence.
Isana's heart fluttered with all the emotions, piling on top of her own fear. She pushed them all firmly away, struggling to master them-and stalked out into the courtyard, squarely between the two men, and put her hands on her hips. "Gentlemen," she said, letting her voice ring out. "You are interrupting lunch."
Warner took a step toward Kord, his eyes never leaving the other Stead-holder. "You can't expect me to stand here and take this."
Kord sauntered forward a willing pace himself. "Juris macto," he said. "Just declare it, Warner, and we can settle this."
Isana spun to face Kord, meeting his eyes squarely. "Not in my courtyard you won't."
Bittan, behind Kord, let out a rough laugh and stepped forward, toward Isana. "Well, well," he said. "What we got here? Another little hold whore standing up for whore Heddy?"
"Bittan," Kord growled, in warning.
Isana narrowed her eyes at Bittan. The young man's confidence, arrogance, and a sickening rush of his lust whirled over her like a foul, greasy smoke. She watched him approach, arrogantly smiling as he eyed her, from her bare feet to her long braid. The idiot evidently did not know her by sight.
"Going bad early," Bittan commented. "But I bet you'd be good for a tumble." He reached out a hand to touch Isana's face.
Isana let him touch her for a moment, felt the desperate, arrogant need of the young man to prove himself in his own eyes. She reached up and seized his wrist and then said, voice cold, "Rill. Deal with this slive."
Bittan abruptly convulsed and threw himself backward onto the ground. He let out a strangled scream that cut off halfway through, as clear, foaming water burst from his mouth. He thrashed on the courtyard stones in a frantic tangle of flailing limbs. His eyes bulged, and he tried to scream again, nothing but water flooding from his mouth and nose.
Kord's other son rushed to his fallen brother, and Kord himself rolled forward a step with an angry snarl. "Bitch," he growled. The earth bulged beneath him, as though preparing to lash forward.
"Go ahead, Kord," Isana said, her voice icy. "But before you do, I should remind you that you are in Bernardholt, now. And you may not challenge me to the juris macto" She smiled at him, as sweet and venomous as she could manage. "I'm not a Steadholder."
"I can still kill you, Isana," Kord said.
"You could," Isana replied. "But then, I wouldn't be able to call Rill off of your boy there, would I?"
"And what if I could use one less mouth to feed?" Kord answered her, showing her his teeth.
"In that case," she said, "I hope you're ready to kill everyone here. Because you won't get away with cold murder, Steadholder Kord. I don't care how far we are from the First Lord's justice-kill me, and there won't be a place in the Realm where you can hide."
Isana promptly turned to Warner and snapped, "Wipe that smile off your face, Steadholder. What kind of behavior is this to show to my holders, and their children?" She stalked toward Warner with a scowl twisting her features. "I'll have your word that you won't engage in this idiocy again while you're a guest in my home."
"Isana," Warner protested, he and his sons still staring at Kord and his own brood, "that animal on the ground is the one who raped my daughter."
"Papa," Heddy sobbed, tugging at Warner's sleeve. "Papa, please."
"Your word, Warner," Isana snapped. "Or I'll rule against you in the truthfind right here and now."
Warner's gaze snapped to Isana, and she felt his sudden shock and surprise. "But Isana-"
"I don't care. You can't behave this way in my home, Warner, and my brother isn't here to knock sense into your fool head. Your word. No more of this duel nonsense. No more fighting in Bernardholt."
Warner stared at her for a moment. Isana felt the man's dismay, his anger, his helpless frustration. His gaze wavered and went to his daughter, and he softened, almost visibly. "All right," he said, quietly. "My word. For all of us. We'll start nothing."
Isana whirled back toward Kord, stalking toward the young man still choking on the ground, vomiting water. She brushed roughly passed the older of Kord's sons (Aric was his name, she thought), and reached down to lay her hand on Bittan's forehead. The boy had gone beyond thought in his animal panic. There was no arrogance there, now, only a fear so intense that it made Isana's skin feel cold.
Kord sneered down at her. "I guess you're going to want my word as well."
"What would be the point," Isana snapped, keeping her voice low. "You're scum, Kord, and we both know it." Louder, she said, "Rill. Out." She stood away as Bittan spluttered and coughed, retching more water out, finally drawing in a gasping breath of air. She left him there, coughing on the ground, and turned to go.
The stone of the courtyard folded over one of her feet with a simple and almost delicate finality. Her heart fluttered with her own fear as she felt
Kord's cold anger on her back. She flicked her braid over her shoulder and shot him a look through narrowed eyes.
"This isn't over, Isana," Kord promised, his voice very quiet. "I won't stand for this."
Isana faced his dark stare, the cold and calculating hatred behind it, and borrowed from it, used it to steel herself against him, to return ice for ice. "You'd best hope it's over, Kord," she said. "Or you're going to think what happened to Bittan was a kindness." She flicked her eyes down to her foot and back up to him. "There's a space for you in the barn. I'll have some food sent down for lunch. We'll call you at dinner."
Kord remained still for a moment. Then he spat to one side, and nodded toward his sons. Aric collected the gasping Bittan, hauling him to his feet, and the three of them walked toward the wide doors of the roomy stone barn. Only as they left did the ground quiver beneath Isana's bare foot and let her go.
She closed her eyes, and the terror she'd been holding back, her own, flooded out and over her. She started shaking, but she shook her head to herself, firmly. Not in fron
t of everyone. She opened her eyes and looked around at the courtyard full of people. "Well?" she asked them. "There is a lot of work to do before the feast come sundown. I can't do everything around here by myself. Get to it."
People moved, at her words, started talking again amongst themselves. Some of them shot her looks of mixed respect, admiration, and fear. Isana felt that last, like frozen cockleburs rolling over her skin. Her own folk, people she'd lived and worked with for years, afraid of her.
She lifted a hand as tears blurred at her eyes-but that was one of the first tricks a watercrafter learned. She willed them away from her eyes, and they simply did not fall. The confrontation, with its rampant tension and potential for murderous violence, had shaken her more than anything in years.
Isana drew in a careful breath and walked toward the kitchens. Her legs kept her steady, at least, though the weariness now crawling over her was nearly too much to bear. Her head ached with the efforts of the morning, with the pressure of all that watercrafting.
Fade came shuffling out of the smithy as she passed it. He moved with an odd little drag of one foot. Not a large man, he had been badly burned when he had been branded with a coward's mark, disfiguring the left half of his face-though that had been years ago. His hair, nearly black, had grown
out long and curling to partially conceal it, and the scar tracing over his scalp, presumably a head wound also suffered in battle. The slave offered her a witless smile and a tin cup of water, holding it up to her along with a fairly clean cloth, far different from his own sweaty rags and burn-scarred leather apron. "Thank you, Fade," Isana said. She accepted both and took a drink. "I need you to keep an eye on Kord. I want you to let me know if he or his sons leave the barn. All right?"
Fade nodded rapidly, his hair flopping. A bit of drool flicked off his half-open mouth. "Eye on Kord," he repeated. "Barn." He frowned, staring into space for a long moment and then pointed a finger at her. "Watch better." She shook her head. "I'm too tired. Just tell me if they leave. All right?" "Leave," Fade repeated. He mopped at his drool with one sleeve. "Tell." "That's right," she said, and gave him a weary smile. "Thank you, Fade." Fade made a hooting sound of pleasure and smiled. "Welcome." "Fade, you'd better not go into the barn. The Kordholters are there, and I get the feeling they'd not be kind to you."
"Ungh," the slave said. "Watch, barn, tell." He turned at once and shuffled off, quickly despite the drag of his foot.
Isana put Old Bitte in charge of the kitchens and returned to her room. She sat down on her bed, her hands folded on her lap. Her stomach fluttered nervously, but she forced herself to take deep breaths to stay calm. She had headed off the most immediate trouble, and Fade, despite his lack of skilled speech and his simple manner, was reliable. He would warn her if something else came up in the meantime.
She worried about Tavi-now more than any time she could remember. He was safe enough with Bernard to look after him, but her instincts would not relent. The pine hollows were the most dangerous stretch of land in the valley, but to her weary senses, the danger seemed deeper than that, and more threatening. There was something heavy and foreboding in the air of the valley, a gathering of forces that made the storm brewing over Garados look weak and tiny by comparison.
Isana laid down on her bed. "Please," she whispered, exhausted. "Great furies please keep him safe."
Chapter 5
Tavi picked up Dodger's trail within an hour, but from there it wasn't so easy. Tavi tailed the flock throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, stopping only to drink from an icy brook and to eat some cheese and salt mutton his uncle had brought with him. By then, Tavi knew that Dodger was living up to his name and leading them on a merry chase, looping back and forth through the barrens.
Though gloomy Garados grew ever taller and darker with storm clouds, Tavi ignored the glowering presence of the mountain and kept his focus on his work. Noon was well past when he finally caught up to the wily ram and his flock.
He heard the sheep before he saw them; one of the ewes let out plaintive bleats. He looked back over his shoulder, to where his uncle followed several dozen strides behind him, and waved a hand to let Bernard know he'd found them. He couldn't keep the grin off his face, and his uncle answered Tavi's smile with his own.
Dodger had led the flock into a dense thicket of brambles and thorns nearly as tall as Tavi himself and a hundred feet deep. Tavi spotted Dodger's curling horns and approached the old ram carefully, talking as he always did. Dodger snorted and pawed at the earth with his front hooves, shaking his curling horns threateningly. Tavi frowned at the ram and approached him more slowly. Dodger himself weighed better than a quarter ton, and the tough breed of mountain sheep the frontier folk of Alera favored, sheep big enough and strong enough to defend themselves against thanadents and worse, could become aggressive when threatened. Careless shepherds had been killed by their overexcited charges.
A sharp, sweet smell made Tavi stop in his tracks. He recognized the scent of slaughtered sheep, of offal and blood.
Something was very wrong.
Tavi approached more slowly, eyes carefully sweeping around. He found the first dead sheep, one of the lambs, several yards short of the brambles. He knelt down and studied the remains, searching for clues as to what had killed the animal.
It hadn't been slives. Slives could kill young sheep, even adults if they had numbers enough, but the poisonous lizards swarmed over corpses and ravaged them into strips of flesh and bared bones. The lamb was dead, but it only showed a single wound-a massive, clean cut that had nearly severed the lamb's head from its neck. A thanadent's talons might have been capable of inflicting such a wound, but when one of the great mountain beasts took a kill, it either devoured it on the spot or else dragged it off to a secluded lair to feed. Wolves-even the great wolves of the savage, barbarian infested wilds east of the Calderon Valley-could not have struck and killed so cleanly. And besides, any predator would have begun to devour the lamb. Beasts did not kill for sport.
The ground around the lamb was grossly disturbed. Tavi checked around quickly for tracks, but he found only the hoof-marks of the sheep and then some marks he was not familiar with, and could not even be sure were tracks. One partially disturbed track may have been the outline of a human heel, but it could as easily have been the result of a round stone being rolled out of its place.
Tavi rose, puzzled, and found two more corpses laying on the ground between the first lamb and Dodger's refuge in the thicket-another lamb and a ewe, both dead of similar massive, clean wounds. A powerful fury might have been capable of causing those wounds, but furies rarely attacked animals without being compelled to do so by their crafter. If an animal had not done the killings, only a man could have. He would need a viciously sharp blade-a long hunting knife or a sword, and might need fury-enhanced strength to help as well.
But the frontier valley rarely had visitors, and none of the holdfolk wandered through the pine barrens. Garados's looming presence made the land for miles about it seem heavy with apprehension, and it was nearly impossible to get a good night's sleep so near the old mountain.
Tavi looked up and frowned at Dodger, who remained in the entrance to the thicket, horns presented in warning, and Tavi suddenly felt afraid. What could have struck down those sheep that way? "Uncle?" Tavi called. His voice cracked a little. "Something is wrong."
Bernard approached, frowning, his eyes taking in Dodger and the flock,
then the dead sheep upon the ground. Tavi watched his uncle take it in, and then Bernard's eyes widened. He rose and drew the short, heavy sword of the legionare from his belt. "Tavi. Come over to me."
"What?"
Bernard's voice took on a sharp edge of anger and command that Tavi had never heard in uncle before. "Now."
Tavi's heart began to pound in his chest, and he obeyed. "What about the flock?"
"Forget them," Bernard said, his voice crisp and cold. "We're leaving."
"But we'll lose the s
heep. We can't just leave them here."
Bernard passed the sword to Tavi, scanning slowly around them, and fitted an arrow to the string of his bow. "Keep the point low. Put your other hand on the small of my back and leave it there."
Tavi's fear rose sharply, but he forced it away and obeyed his uncle. "What's wrong? Why are we leaving?"
"Because we want to get out of the barrens alive." Bernard started pacing silently away from the thicket, his face set in concentration.
"Alive? Uncle, what could-"
Bernard tensed abruptly and spun to one side, lifting his bow.
Tavi turned with him and saw a flash of motion beyond a small stand of young trees before them. "What is th-"
There was a hissing wail from their opposite side. Tavi whipped his head around, but his uncle was slower, spinning his entire body with his bow at arm's length, an arrow drawn back to his cheek. Tavi could do little but watch their attacker come.
It looked like a bird-if a bird could be eight feet tall and mounted on a pair of long, powerful legs, thicker and stronger-looking than a racing horse's, and tipped with wicked claws. Its head sat on the end of a long, powerful, flexible neck, and sported a hawk's beak, enlarged many times, sharp-looking and viciously hooked. Its feathers were colored in all dark browns and blacks, though its eyes were a brilliant shade of gold.
The bird bounded forward, taking a pair of steps and leaping into the air, both claws coming forward to rake while it beat at the air with ridiculously undersized wings. Tavi felt his uncle shove at him with his hip as he turned, and fell away and to one side, Bernard between him and the oncoming horror.
Bernard loosed his arrow without sighting. The arrow flew, struck at a poor angle, and glanced off the thing's feathers, skittering away in a blur of
black and green fletching. The beast landed on Bernard, its claws raking, its vicious beak whipping forward and down toward him.
When hot droplets of his uncle's blood struck his face, Tavi began to scream.